Pressure Point

by William P. Wood

Overview

It started as a tragic but simple murder, an old woman killed in the street for her handbag. But as police detectives Terry Nye and Rose Tafoya investigate, they find very little that makes sense, and nothing that leads where they expect. Even stranger, Nye and Tafoya are pretty sure they’ve been under surveillance ever since they showed up at the crime scene. And when they discover some shocking forensic evidence, they know they’re in way over their heads.

Dennis Cooper has been prosecuting homicides in the D.A.’s office for years, but he’s never seen a case like this one. The suspect that Nye and Tafoya have given him is no run-of-the-mill mugger. And there’s much more at stake than a conviction. This case has some very powerful people very concerned—and determined to stop Cooper at any cost.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620454831
Publisher:	Turner
Publication date:	12/23/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	514 KB

About the Author

WILLIAM P. WOOD is the bestselling author of nine novels and one nonfiction book. As a deputy district attorney in California, he handled thousands of criminal cases and put on over 50 jury trials. Two of Wood’s novels have been produced as motion pictures, including Rampage, filmed by Academy Award–winning director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist, Rules of Engagement), and Broken Trust, filmed by Jane Fonda Films with the screenplay by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. Wood’s books have been translated into several foreign languages. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Read an Excerpt

The Sacramento County Coroner was a twenty-four-hour operation. The graveyard shift was as busy as any other, perhaps to live up to its unfortunate name. Bodies were brought to the steel crypt in the basement from accidents all over the county, hospitals and nursing homes, suicides and homicides. Bodies were wrestled from wrecked cars, railroad and Metro Rail tracks, sloughs and the American or Sacramento Rivers, from attics and bedrooms and under homes. Rose told him about the memorable time, as a rookie, when she had gone into the American River near Garden Highway to help heft a three-hundred-pound male body back to where it could be winched up. Sometimes bodies came from bathtubs or on boats along the rivers, hanging from ceiling fixtures or rafters, even from cars and motor homes with the motors still blindly running. Terry disliked the grim cold gray-blue labyrinth intensely. But like every cop, homicide in particular, periodic visits were a necessity. He and Rose passed through the steel crypt crowded with bodies, the eerie snap and blue light of a bug zapper competing with several small radios on long white tables, coroner’s assistants munching on jelly beans.

With distaste, Terry saw a crew of assistant coroners measuring, photographing, weighing, and then wrapping two bodies in plastic and sliding them into refrigerated shelves. It unpleasantly reminded him of fish sticks in the freezer at home.

Editorial Reviews

Gripping . . . bleeds with tension and suspense!” —Steve Martini, bestselling author, for Quicksand “Wood, a former prosecutor, really shows his expertise of writing about the legal system with this spellbinding, gripping novel.” —The Best Reviews “Wood clearly knows the inner workings of the judicial system.” —Publishers Weekly “William P. Wood, a former prosecutor, knows well how to surprise and engross us.” —Vincent Bugliosi, Author of Helter Skelter “A natural storyteller!” —Norman Katkox, Author of Blood and Orchids “What Joseph Wambaugh did for law enforcement, William P. Wood will do for the judiciary.” —Tulsa World

From the Publisher